She has a doughy face and bulging, raisin eyes; her belly-folds flop one over another in a fleshy heap. Her companions look like Mediterraneans trying to be gentleman, with their succulent lips, hirsute chins and cheap jackets.
This is no nude; she brazens at me from the painting, a naked, living woman. There is hair (hair!) peeking from her armpit and the sole of one lumpen foot bares itself to my eyes. Her dress, a discarded picnic blanket of blue silk-organza, holds – instead of the meat of her – a tilted basket of peaches, plums and grapes, as well as a water flask and a knot of bread.
Another woman – the last quarter, I presume, of this vulgar foursome – is paddling in murky water in the background. She, at least, has remained half-clothed and retains something of the aura of a wood-nymph among dark trees.
But her naked sister, well, she is a wanton, who clearly has been, or shortly will be, in flagrante delicto with her swarthy suitors. And I’ve no doubt, from the cut of her jib, that indeed she would welcome onlookers.
Pablo Picasso
Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe
(d’après Édouard Manet), 1960
Yeah, it’s hard to know what Picasso was up to with this, really. Is it homage or piss-take? Either way, it’s great. The nude is flat-white and she’s shaped like a cello – she seems to be playing herself with a bow. Deeper meaning?
There’s only one man, the other clearly didn’t show up. The man that’s there, though, seems to have brought along an attractive glass triangle. Hey, early inspiration for I. M. Pei’s Louvre pyramid!
Something on the front-right of the scene has caught the nude’s interest: it might be one of the limes/lemons/grapefruit. Is she hungry, or suffering from scurvy and therefore craving the juicy citrus flesh? Or she may want to nab her dress from under the fruit and that shell-like, cabbagey thing, so that she can dress and leave.
The background trees are a fern-frondy canopy and the woman in the (cerulean) water has pneumatic – if lopsided – boobs, and (perhaps) no head.
I don’t think the nude and the man are planning anything. They don’t seem that interested in each other.
Bow Wow Wow
See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang, Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy!
(LP cover, after Édouard Manet), 1981
Annabella Lwin. Starkers on the front of the album. She was only fourteen when that pic was taken and her mother went ape, crazy, doo-lally. Mine would’ve too. Still, it’s deadly. She’s bloody perfect, of course, all tanned and flat stomached. Her real name is like Myan Myan Mar or something; she’s from the Burmese jungle, I heard. Hence the tan. Anyway, Bow Wow Wow’s manager said she’d never get anywhere in the music biz with a mad name like Mar Mar, or whatever it was, so he changed it. He changed it, not her!
The picture? Oh, yeah, sorry…It’s nice, summery. They might be having a picnic but all they have is a few apples and oranges, it looks like. It’s a very green photo – even the water is green – but there’s brown muck near the front and they guy leaning down on the right is wearing red trousers; that adds a lot of colour. And the boat is red too. I think the woman in the water is black; she has a turban on her head.
Annabella’s skin is very bright. She looks out from the photograph and they two guys just chat to each other. The three of them make a triangle. Is that enough? Oh, when they released ‘Go Wild in the Country’ as a single, they put the same photo in black and white on the cover, but it didn’t look as good. ‘I Want Candy’ is still their best song, I think.
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